“Caroline Phillips is a tenacious and skilful writer with a flair for high quality interviewing and a knack for making things work.”
All the best trips involve the possibility of dying. The first time this occurs to me is when three soldiers cock their rifles at us outside our hotel in Ataco, El Salvador. (It transpires that the hotel is opposite an army communications mast.) On another occasion, we’re accompanied on a sightseeing trip to Conchagua volcano by two policemen with guns: a precaution because machete-wielding locals once mugged some tourists.
Children play cricket on the beach with a homemade mango-wood bat. Fishing boats of sun-bleached blues and ocean greens rest up on the sand, and enticing smells advertise just-caught crabs and fish coconut curry. Nearby, at the edge of the beach, there’s a gate fashioned from crooked cinnamon branches.
They’re serving afternoon tea on cake stands with fans circling overhead and the Indian Ocean as a backdrop. There’s a lawn for croquet. Beyond this — and framed by 19th century columns and palm trees — there are ladies sashaying in gold and purple saris to watch a wedding on the promenade. The sound of traditional instruments fills the warm air and the sun is setting, a crimson ball in the sky. Who would imagine that this is just steps away from a vehicle-clogged city of dust, concrete and bustle?
Go in spring and you’ll see deer gambolling on the lawns. In summer, the days are long and the light bright for striding across heather-carpeted hills and for lazy days fishing on its loch. In autumn, there’s bracing wild swimming.
Close your eyes and imagine spruce and pine trees dappled in snow. Or walk through the wardrobe and you’ll find a picture-perfect scene of virgin snow-capped hills, ancient monkey-puzzle trees sprinkled with white powder beside icy lakes. Yes, in winter it’s like Narnia or a winter wonderland. Idyllic, no?
I’m a big foodie. So I’m as eager as corn kernels on a hot stove to be spending a day learning to cook at the Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons. Le Manoir – for anyone who has been living in Tupperware since 1984 – is Raymond Blanc’s two Michelin starred eaterie and hotel in Oxfordshire. RB (as he’s known locally) is, of course, the author, TV personality and chef.
View transcriptIt would be hard to get closer to the sea without being on a boat. Spyglass is a bijou erstwhile fisherman’s cottage which was once part of a fort – all whitewashed outside and shabby chic maritime inside. It’s reached along the tiniest pedestrian-nly lane, by iPhone torch if you’re late (which the kids will love).
“We have old things to see. And then we have very old things and even older things to see.” Thus speaks the man who has asked me to call him ‘Sammy’, claiming that he looks like Sammy Davis Junior. His real name is Abdulilah Sussi. He’s my guide here in Fez, by the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. As Fez is a place with a medina with 10,000 labyrinthine alleyways, a guide is essential.
This three-bedroom Chelsea flat, like the happiest hippy trip with only the cheeriest colours, belongs to interior decorator Emma Deterding of Kelling Designs. She and her husband bought the place nine years ago.
What links Rachel Weisz, Kirsten Dunst and Sophie Dahl? Oh, and Elle Macpherson, Meg Ryan and Gwyneth Paltrow too. They’re all clients of Vaishaly, the super facialist. She’s also brow sculptor (threader) to the superstars. As if that isn’t enough, she and one of her team of whizzo therapists have just started offering microblading —a form of eyebrow tattooing, about which more later. Plus Vaishaly has recently expanded into the neighbouring building to open a nail bar offering everything you could ever want for the tips of your hands.
Florence, cradle of the Italian Renaissance and the place where Leonardo and Michelangelo worked, packs more beauty per millimetre than any other city. There’s something gasp-worthy wherever you go, from architecture to 15th-century frescoes, bas-reliefs and al fresco statues. Plus there are cobbled streets with botteghe (artisanal workshops), piazzas for relaxing with a cappuccino or a glass of Brunello di Montalcino, trattorias for ribollita (traditional bread soup) and (thankfully, given the crowds) a pedestrianised central zone. And then there’s all that Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana that just has to be bought.
There are five-star hotels, and then there are the ones that deserve an entire firmament of stars. Places like the Plaza in New York, Claridge’s in London, and the Hôtel Ritz in Paris. I’ve stayed in the gold list of historical hotels from Mumbai’s Taj Mahal to Raffles in Siem Riep and Le Meurice in Paris too. It’s with this context in mind that I say that the Four Seasons in Florence is a real corker. A hotel so good that I’d like to live there, per favore.
There are not many hotels that send a man on a bike to collect clients. But that’s what happens when I stay in the Hotel Savoy in Florence, Italy. Raffaello cycles on a chic fifties-style bicycle to come and find one very lost client (that’s me) stranded somewhere near the Mercato Centrale. He cycles in front of me in his thick black morning suit jacket, leading the way stylishly to the hotel.
I am onstage in front of 65 strangers who think I’m a stand-up comedian. I’ve never done anything like this before. Why have I agreed…
I am lying on a wooden massage bed as two women rub my naked body with hot pouches of cooked rice, milk and medicinal herbs.…
As we stepped off the Dodekanisos Pride ferry onto the Greek island of Symi for our late August beach holiday, our thoughts were on sunbathing…